32 Best Ambient Albums Ever Made

Here it is, the Optimistic Underground list of best ambient albums ever made. Inspired by all the discussion surrounding Pitchfork’s list of the genre, I decided to lay out my favorites. This is a sound that I’ve been in love with my whole life, so the only problem was narrowing it down.

Lots of people like ambient music for lots of reasons. Some love to fall asleep to it. Some are fascinated with the granular detail of slow songs. Some enjoy the way that it can dilate time, shifting perception for vast stretches of just being there.

I love it for all of these reasons, and for the way it can utterly transport my mind in a way that frees me to have breakthrough thoughts, little eurekas, the kind of ideas that spring up during a long bike ride or a mediation session. Ambient music is contemplative music, for all intents and purposes. It’s music to think about, and think to.

Update 8/18: I’m now organizing this list into chronological order based on some quality feedback from friends and readers. I think this will help give context to the music as we move through the years, giving a sense of narrative from the earliest releases to the latest. To be completely honest, I’m not sure why I chose random order when I first wrote this list – I’d like to send a message two years back to ask myself. I’ve learned even more in the time since, so I’ll likely bring future updates to this list.

In the meantime, I thank you for reading and I hope you find something new to love, maybe an entire genre. Some of these albums are definitely more canonical or officially beloved than others, but I consciously choose to ignore the popular, limiting narratives about the genre. The important thing is that these are all incredible works of music that deserve your attention, and that every piece here exemplifies a facet of ambient music, from its core to its outer fringes. Every single album here is a definitive example of the power and possibility of ambient music.

Terry Riley – A Rainbow In Curved Air
1969

I feel like I said it pretty well back in 2009: “This recording is analogous to a profound dream: deeply affecting, nuanced, beautiful, yet devoid of concrete meaning. The feelings evoked are an end unto themselves. These sounds are subconscious and natural. This composition is eternal.”

On this record, Riley laid the foundation for his pattern improvisation technique, twisting sumptuous timbre shifts on synthesizers and organs, contrasting order and seeming chaos, erupting in little moments of bliss and long stretches of dizzying, dissonant melody. It’s as timeless as music gets.

• • •

Miles Davis – In A Silent Way
1969

Yes, it’s technically jazz. But In A Silent Way is perhaps the very birthplace of ambient music. There’s a holistic sense of tone and texture that wraps the entire production from end to end, creating a dreamlike atmosphere for the laid-back band to play around in. It’s impossible to overstate how important of a development this was in 1969. The album played a huge role in influencing Brian Eno’s early ambient work, introducing the idea that music could feel calm, otherworldly, and self contained while still offering room for its tangible elements to move and interact. It’s an important outlier in Miles Davis‘ catalogue, a quiet explosion of new sound that was quickly abandoned in favor of the burgeoning, brash fusion sound of the 1970s.

For proof of Davis’ ambient bona fides, you can hear In A Silent Way nestled perfectly into the Luminous Path mixtape.

• • •

Brian Eno – Discreet Music
1975

This album is where the genre was first truly expressed to its extreme. The title track is a half hour cascade of shifting tones, rippling textures, and achingly light synth melody. Eno’s programmed structures bounce off and reflect themselves, creating a kaleidoscopic rendition of a narrow band of musical color. It’s as calm as the sea on a windless night, and just as deep, dark, and full of mystery. Even better, it’s backed by a three part deconstruction of Pachelbel’s Canon in which the parts phase in and out of sync, blurring and erasing all sense of time.

• • •

Tangerine Dream – Rubycon
1975

This is my favorite Tangerine Dream album for a lot of reasons. Rubycon is a concise distillation of everything the band did well into 30 minutes of cosmic drift. It’s also a perfect crossroads between the earlier droning incarnation of the band and the often prog-rock leaning sound they evolved into by the 1980s. Most importantly, it sounds like nothing else on earth. It sounds like what I picture the inside of a wormhole looks like. This is a fundamental record of psychedelic music and a foundational record of ambient.

• • •

Manuel Göttsching – Inventions for Electric Guitar1975

Inventions For Electric Guitar is the perfect bridge between first wave German kosmische music and the early techno it eventually inspired. With a pair of twenty minute epics and a smaller tune between, Göttsching wastes no time stretching the outer edges of rock far beyond what anyone was doing at the time, or for years to come. His guitar here often sounds like an arpeggiated synth or a warm drone wave, rarely revealing itself as the traditional six stringed instrument we all think we know. From his early days in Ash Ra Tempel to the proto-prog of Ashra, this man was always at the vanguard of new sounds; here he simply hit a sweet spot for ambient groove music that was never quite found again.

• • •

Cluster – Sowiesoso
1976

This is the best recording from the original lineup of the band that resisted all categorization, even the burgeoning “krautrock” in their prime. Cluster began more a menacing, freeform cousin of Tangerine Dream’s early experiments, evolving into something as complex and driving as krautrock champions like Neu! and Can, without even the most remote of connections to recognizable rock music. The pieces here exist out of time, cloudlike pop confections in a sea of glowing haze.

• • •

Klaus Schulze – Mirage
1977

“Music is a dream without the isolation of sleep” is the tagline in the sleeve. Still, I swear that this is the actual, real-deal soundtrack to zooming across the lunar landscape. It feels just like your best acid-fantasy out of body experience, an ideal trip that sees you zooming through the solar system like you’re on that Cosmos ship with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Schulze is a prolific German composer who was part of the initial lineup of both Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel. It’s kind of incredible how much talent exploded from that brief era of time in that specific part of the world. While every Schulze fan seems to have a different favorite, and the press often points to Moondawn as a breakthrough, it’s this album, Mirage, that’s always caught my sense of wonder. The two half-hour pieces here offer an out of body experience for those willing to take the plunge.

• • •

Steve Hillage – Rainbow Dome Musick
1979

This album is a holistic distillation of everything that ambient would be known for over a decade after it was released. It is an outlier in Hillage’s catalog, a leap into the future on a sleekly ambient pulse, mixing guitar, synthesizer, piano, and exotic percussion into a seamless wash of sound. You’d never know it was recorded live, but the fact that it was makes it all the more impressive. Seriously, this sounds like it was made in the early 90s, not the late 70s.

Thank you! I really struggled with Chill Out to be honest – it was on my original pile of 50 or so albums – but at some point it ended up on the chopping block. >_< I already thought of another 10 albums I wish I'd included!

I love Chill Out but I am kinda glad he used something else in lieu of it – it’s such a well-known ambient record that I’m sure most ambient fans are at least aware of. Dang, now I kinda want to listen to it.

This is an exciting list that contains enough of my own favorites (The Orb, Seefeel, Stars Of The Lid, Alva Noto, Slowdive, etc) to assure me that we’re on the same wavelength … but a whole pile of other albums I’ve never heard but should clearly check out.

I’m starting at the top, with “Rainbow Dome Musick”, which is fabulous. From my perspective it’s an obvious progenitor of “The Orb’s Adventures…” — of course I already know of Hillage’s involvement in that group, but I’d never heard his own music to compare with it.

I should make my own list. There are a lot of stone classics you’ve inexcusably overlooked ;-)

Excellent comment, I’m glad to see someone else who’s familiar with a pretty wide swath of this stuff!

As for the overlooked things: I’d love to hear suggestions! I’m actually putting together a second “oops I forget these” list that will include some I forgot, some that have been suggested since I published, and some that I simply had to cut to make the list more succinct. I’m eager for things I’ve never heard :)

Just in case I never end up writing that post, some quick picks for my list:

Robert Rich “Trances/Drones” (Massively deep soundworlds from 1982)
Stars Of The Lid “Avec Laudenum” (I love all their albums, but this for me is their pinnacle)
Eluder “Drift” (This sounds exactly like being asleep)
How To Disappear Completely “Arterial” (The best by this mysterious but very prolific Eastern European improv-ambient group)
Biosphere “Autour de la Lune” (Don’t make me choose between this and “Substrata”. They’re so different they might as well be by separate artists!)
Expo 70 “Center Of The Earth” (Exactly what it says on the tin. 45 minutes of deeply cthonic guitar noise, then 5 minutes of palate cleanser.)
Windy & Carl “A Dream Of Blue” (None of their full albums really do it for me, but they have some killer EPs. See also: “Antarctica”.)
Loscil “Submers” (Ambient dub perfected.)
Aloof Proof “Piano Text” (Ambient piano music perfected. Or you could call this a reverb album featuring a piano.)
Krill.Minima “Radiodub EP” (Ambient dub made out of static, hisses, crackles. It’s like if you recorded distant music off a shortwave radio and then subtracted out the music.)
Zoviet*France “Shouting At The Ground” (Only a few of their many albums appeal to me, but this one is amazing. It has the same quality as early SoTL, where you have no idea what kinds of instruments the sounds are being made by, or even if they’re forwards or reversed.)

Damn, looks like I have enough material here for at least a Part One post; just need to add links to some audio…

These are excellent choices! I included Submers but the rest slipped my mind. Well, to be fair I was considering Windy & Carl’s Antarctica, but it just didn’t make the cut. Howevever, the rest of your choices are very interesting. I LOVE Avec Laudenum, but Ballasted Orchestra is loved just a little bit more. It’s probably the Twin Peaks fan in me…

I’m definitely doing to check out the Robert Rich, Eluder, Aloof Proof, Krill.Minima albums, since those are all new to me. Also, it’s been years since I’ve listened to Zoviet*France, so I should go back to that :) If you do publish your post, let me know! I’d love to see it all.

Sleep Research Facility – “Deep Frieze”, perhaps the best of his works.

Thomas Köner’s “Nuuk” always electrifies me from the very first moment. Super intense.

Something from the “new German ambient” school of the early to mid-nineties, the Recycle or Die label. Baked Beans “Bean Me Up, Scotty” or Stevie Be Zet’s “Archaic Modulation” – both well bordering into New Age perhaps.

Wonderful suggestions, thank you! I really do regret not including Substrata, to be honest. Maybe I’d just seen it on too many other lists, but it’s there for a reason – it’s a true classic.

The only one of your other suggestions I’ve heard is the Sleep Research Facility, so I’m excited to explore some new tunes. I’m familiar with Köner but not Nuuk,, and the rest are just completely new. As for some sounding like New Age… I have a deep affinity for that sound too. Are you familiar with the Wolf Müller & Cass release from earlier this year, The Sound of Glades? I shared it a few months ago, and even considered it for my big list, but decided that it was too new in the end. ( https://optimisticunderground.com/2016/07/20/wolf-muller-and-cass-the-sound-of-glades/ if you’re curious)

Happy to hear that you like my suggestions. I completely understand the impulse to omit Substrata – but, I’ve just listened to it again, and I think it does deserve to be mentioned that often. ;-)

Also, I share your hesitation about naming things “best of” prematurely. I too think that music needs to “ripen” or perhaps grow, and pass the test of time before being awarded a “best of”. :-)

Anyway, thanks again for sharing your list, I enjoyed it a lot – and I just got notice that my copy of “Returnal” is on the way to me. I’m going to check out the Wolf Müller & Cass album now. Thanks for the recommendation!

Yes, the music needs to ripen, good way to say it. Even the albums I love right away end up better after some time. And wow, that’s great you got Returnal! OPN is one of my favorite artists and that is a gem of an album. I really hope you love it too!

Great list! I like that you included Birth of a New Day. I bounce off most vaporwave, even the original Eccojams, but this one pulled me right in.

Also really love Alva Noto. When I heard he was involved in The Revenant’s soundtrack, I immediately ran out to go watch it, ha ha. Leonardo winning an Oscar? I’ll catch it on DVD. Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto on the soundtrack? Better go watch it on the big screen.

A recommendation: Steve Roach – Possible Planet. An entire album made on a modular analog system almost 10 years before the modular analog resurgence, no MIDI, no keyboards, no computers. The stirrings of life on an alien planet; nothing else sounds like this. I don’t see it mentioned much, but it is one of my all time favorites. Turn up the subwoofer for this one, trust me.

Great recommendation – I’ve heard a lot of Steve Roach but not that album! I’ll listen asap.

Also, I felt the same way about The Revenant when I saw who was scoring it. Fantastic aesthetics. Also, I honestly am the same way with a lot of vaporwave. The genre is flush with embryonic sounds that have only recently been fleshed out into more ambitious creations like the 2814 album. Have you heard their newer album? I like it a lot, but it’s not as unique sounding.. feels like classic 90s minimal techno in a big way.

Thanks! As I mentioned in the intro, I was inspired by all the talk about that list, but I was a bit underwhelmed by the list itself. They included a lot of great albums, but missed some really interesting ones.

Of course, I missed a couple essential things too (I wish I’d included Biosphere – Substrata!) so I’m making a second list soon with a handful of albums I forgot + some great suggestions from readers.

Late to the party but, wow… thank you so much for this. I’m diving into Ambient music for the first time and this is bar none the best list I have found. I have sampled about 4 albums so far and really dig them all. Much appreciated!

That’s awesome to hear! Thank you for letting me know – I love knowing that I’ve helped someone get into new music. Which albums did you try so far? If you want to hear more recommendations, I’m happy to share!

Nice collection – especially glad to see Liumin on here. But alas, such a shame that Robert Rich is neglected from this list! If I had to choose one of his releases (because it’s too easy to pick 5+ essentials from his catalog), I would absolutely add Echo of Small Things to this list. And, while I’m thinking of it… Substrata and/or Shenzhou by Biosphere, Journey to the Sun by Adham Shaikh, and for something more experimental, Radio Amor by Tim Hecker. Nevertheless, I look forward to checking out some new stuff from here.

I definitely regret leaving off Substrata – it’s one of my favorite ambient albums without a doubt. I also wish I’d included a Tim Hecker album. As for Shaikh, I’ve never heard of him so I’ll check that out. And I definitely do not recall ever hearing an album by Robert Rich, so I’m looking for ‘Echo’ right now. Thank you for the suggestions!!

Substrata has been on so many lists that it might be implied by now :P. I remember finding Journey to the Sun on another top ambient list, and it’s one that definitely stuck with me. Organic and meditative – the two longest tracks on the album are masterpieces for me.

Robert Rich has quickly become my favourite electronic/ambient musician. The variety of instruments that he uses is incredible – tons of electronic equipment with flutes, lap steel guitar and percussion. His albums range from rhythmic and melodic world/tribal sounds to some darker ambient and spacey soundscapes. Can’t get enough of it! His releases will definitely give you something to deep dive into :). And it’s all on his Bandcamp!

Wow, Rich sounds right up my alley, especially with the lap steel guitar stuff. I’m leaving the country for a few days so I’ll hopefully have time to listen over the next week.

Speaking of lap steel guitar and ambient music, have you heard Chuck Johnson’s Balsams from last year? Wonderfully warm, enveloping sounds, I wrote about it around July I believe. Reminds me of Eno’s work with Lanois.

No Substrata? Just kidding, I realize all this stuff is subjective.
I would like to say though, thank you for including the KWJAZ. That album is a masterpiece. Everyone always sniffs at it like “Oh right, just like Ariel Pink and Rangers, Etc” to which I always want to add “Yeah, but better.”

I really, really regret not including Substrata. Honestly, I don’t know what my brain was doing, because it’s not only a classic but a personal favorite. I even used Hyperborea in a mix a couple years ago! (It’s called Ballroom and it’s on here if yr curious)

About KWJAZ, that’s incredible! I haven’t heard anyone rate it like I do before. I enjoy Ariel Pink and Rangers and a lot of the stuff that was floating around then, but you’re spot on. It’s just better. I so wish we could have had a follow-up from this project.

Great list! But of course I have to mention some imo overlooked classics:

Secede – Tryshasla
This is an amazing concept album about a dying man who journeys in mis mind to a world called Tryshasla. The concept isn’t new; Jethro Tull employed it in their underappreciated A Passion Play. But Secede manages to pull it off brilliantly, with very few lyrics, just from the power and mood of the music.

Spacetime Continuum – Sea Biscuit is a mesmerizing album by Jonah Sharp, and the album that turned me on to the genre more than 20 years ago. It still sounds fresh all these years later.

Gas – 0095
Woob – 1194
Two essential releases from the seminal em:t label. It ranks in importance with Instinct Ambient, and just behind FAX.

IMO, you should have at least one Tetsu Inoue release on your list. Many might choose World Receiver or Ambiant Otaku, or maybe Flowerhead, one of his Datacide collabs with Atom Heart (Uwe Schmidt), but my favorite is Organic Cloud.

Great list, my only objection is the lack of anything Boards of Canada. Unless you don’t consider that ambient? I’ve always been terrible with genres but it seems like any variety of BoC albums would fit alongside many other entries in this list.

I’d consider Boards of Canada more of an IDM act, I suppose – they came up on Warp in the late 90s mixing a lot of elements – I’d definitely say they worked with ambient forms, but almost always mixed with other genre signifiers, like hip-hop and techno. I think I could make a case for In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country as an ambient masterpiece, in fact. It’s kind of an outlier in their catalog but it’s maybe my favorite.

Thank you! I’m so glad the list introduced you to some new stuff, that’s my main motivation for writing them. I Honestly I just think the first SAW works better as an album. They’re both amazing and the second contains one of my (and a lot of people’s) favorite ambient tracks ever, Rhubarb. I could have easily chosen it too, I suppose. But I had to go with my gut. The first one stretches the edges of “ambient” a lot, and that might have been a factor too.

i play a lot of ambient on my radio show Wreck This Mess and think this list is WAY better than the other Pitchfork and imitator lists [pretty much all the same!] i kept saying what about Deepchord/rod Modell/ CV 313 and YOU have them. And Miles and susumu yokota. I would have included Bohren & der Club of Gore, terre thaemlitz, bill laswell, Yagya [Sleepygirls], Smooth [Contemporary Past], Bing Satellites [maybe], but definitely Zoviet France and Rapoon, Gavin Bryars [Titanic], Ishq, Fantastic Sound & Mystic Moods Orchestra, 23 Degrees, Nonplace Urbanfield, Michael Mantra vs Deepchord, Pink Floyd [Soundscape Secret Track], Murcof, the Caretaker… But nice list. I learned something. WTM https://www.mixcloud.com/wreckthismess/

Thanks for the comment and compliment! Those are all great suggestions, especially Thaemlitz, Zoviet, and Caretaker. Funny enough, I actually have Radio Fore by Mantra & Modell on my big 32 best dub techno albums list, and Yagya too (Rigning) but the walls between these genres are very porous – Modell appears on both, naturally!

I’ll definitely have to check out your radio show, because it sounds right up my alley :)

i definitely ALSo [like another reader mentioned] think Ishq belongs on there. listen to Smooth’s Contemporary Past. It’s very program music-esque. Göttsching is also an amazing choice. i have trouble with genres so i just play whatever seems to fit together… so slow glitchy-blippy stuff can be ambient or very subdued techno dub. some Deadbeat or burial with massive attack ‘paradise circus’. the Green Kingdom also makes sweet but not sappy ambient. there is a lot of treacle out there. On Earth by Woob.
World Receiver by Tetsu Inoue …

I was totally unfamiliar with Ishq so I’ve actually got a few albums lined up to hear, now that I’m finally moved into my new home. As for Contemporary Past, I’ll find that too. Thanks! It’s great to bump into someone else who has a wider view of what genres like this can be.

Oh! And in response to your other comment – I love that Fennesz & Sakamoto album, as well as pretty much all Yagya. I included “Rigning” on my dub techno list, actually :)

First – thanks for the list; some unheard stuff I’ll be checking out.
I won’t rant about the absence of Substrata, but surely at least one album by Biosphere just HAD to be on the list. “Shenzhou” or “Autour de la Lune” for example… the latter being the most faithful representation of “music for space” I’ve ever heard. No typical sci-fi sounds and effects, but just a trip into the silent void.
The “problem” with ambient genre is that the name can be taken in a very broad sense. Including Miles’ “In a Silent Way” takes some hard stretching of the term. But since it is so, I would definitely put some of 90’s records by The Future Sound of London here, like double “Lifeforms”. “Ambient house” can’t sound better than that. The richness of details embroided into the album is staggering.
Anyway, for anyone reading the comments, be sure to check out the following, if you haven’t already:
– Sleep Research Facility – “Nostromo”, “Dead Weather Machine”
– S.E.T.I. – “Baikal”, “Corona”
– Coil – “Time Machines”
– Woob – “1194”
– Tetsu Inoue – “World Receiver”, “Ambiant Otaku”
– Ben Frost – “By the Throat”
– William Basinski – “Desintegration Loops”
– Gas – “Nah und Fern” (box set)

yes, a bit of self-promo although more a promo for the CITY of VIENNA which I recently visited and decided to do a radio show on featuring a wide variety of sounds, songs and ambiences… fascinated by the great nonclassical material in Vienna inc Fennesz, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Waldeck, the soundscapes of Gabriele Proy, the jazzy ambiences with yodeling by Weather Report’s Joe Zawinul – Fennesz’s take on Mahler very hypnotic : https://www.mixcloud.com/wreckthismess/wreck-vienna-1219/